Readers, Have You Ever Had This Happen?

So...

Has it ever happened that you were reading a book, a brand new hardcover, not a review copy, and you suddenly come upon a jarringly misplaced sentence? I'm talking about a sentence that changes the whole scene that you have just read, an alternative to the action just described, a version that was obviously considered at one point but was left in the book only because of some really poor editing.

That happened to me this afternoon with a book I just started reading. About 50 pages into the thing, a murder mystery that had completely sucked me in to its story, I suddenly did a literal double-take. I had to re-read the paragraphs three times to make sure that I was really seeing what I thought I was reading.

Now I can't get that blip out of my mind and it's causing me to think less of the book. I know that's not fair, and I suspect I'll be over it by the time I finish the book in a few days, but it sure bugs me right now.

Are editors doing a poorer job than they did in the past? Or do we perhaps become better readers over time as the number of books we have read keeps adding up? This is a bit like watching a movie that you really like until you suddenly recall what a jackass the leading man is in the real world? The movie becomes a bit tainted at that point. Silly, I know. You don't have to say it.

Why Does This E-Book Cost So Much?

Rick Broida, The Cheapskate over at CNET News, is asking a question today that is probably on the minds of everyone who has ever purhased an e-book, be that book from Sony, Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Why in the heck does an e-book cost almost the same as a physical book that has so many additional costs associated with its production and handling?

Case in point: I just read a glowing review of Jonathan Tropper's "This is Where I Leave You." I'm sold; I want it. But something's amiss here: Amazon's hardcover price is $15.57, while the Kindle edition sells for $14.01.

Now, I understand books cost money. There's editing, publishing, and distribution. Paper, ink, trucks, gasoline. Storage, shipping, shelf space, sales staff. And the countless people involved in all those transactions.

E-books, on the other hand, consume zero trees. They weigh nothing, occupy no physical space, and don't get shipped in the traditional sense. Middlemen are few and far between. So you're left with, what, editing costs and the pittance you pay the authors?

Now, here is my favorite part of the article (even though I realize it will be a cold day in you know where before any publisher would dare try this idea):

Let's get some perspective. Publishers have vast libraries of old, forgotten books that are generating zero income, or close to it. Why can't I buy e-book editions for 99 cents? Last I checked, some revenue was better than no revenue.

Why aren't best sellers priced at, say, $2.99? That's an impulse-buy price, one that would encourage readers to pony up instead of waiting weeks or months to check out the one print copy the library bought.

Book publishers are making the same mistake that music labels have made in recent years. Both businesses are sitting on a goldmine of out-of-print material that generates absolutely zero income for them right now. Why not bring some of those gems out in e-book format as a test to see what might happen when they are made available for a dollar or two. I suspect that the publishers would be amazed at the amount of cash that would roll their way.

Sadly, though, I doubt that book publishers are any more visionary than music labels proved to be. Incompetent management has just about killed the major labels; I would really hate to see that happen to the book publishers.

Doubleback: A Novel of Suspense

Doubleback, the latest from Libby Fischer Hellmann (scheduled for an October 2009 release), is my first exposure to her work. Hellmann is the author of a series of suspense novels featuring video producer Ellie Foreman, and Doubleback is her second novel to feature Private Investigator Georgia Davis. Fans of the Ellie Foreman series will be pleased to learn that Ellie appears in Doubleback and helps PI Georgia Davis run down the bad guys. The relationship between these two very independent women is, in fact, so much fun to watch that I will be looking for Hellmann’s earlier books.

It all starts for Georgia when Ellie asks her to speak with the mother of a little girl who, only hours earlier, has been kidnapped. Despite Georgia’s advice that the police need to be called in immediately, the little girl’s mother, Chris, fears for the safety of her daughter and refuses to make the phone call. Three days later, when the little girl is released unharmed and appears at the front door of her house things begin to get strange.

Just a few days after the safe return of her daughter, the brakes on Chris’s car fail and she is involved in what the police, at least for the moment, are calling a traffic accident. Georgia, who at times seems to see herself as some kind of avenging angel, has continued to nose around on her own in hope of catching up with the villains who have so badly traumatized the little girl. Consequently, when the child’s father, fearing for the immediate safety of his daughter, agrees to hire Georgia to find those responsible for her kidnapping, she is more than ready to continue her efforts. The pieces finally begin to fall into place for Georgia when she learns that Chris may have embezzled $3 million from her bank employer in a scheme that started not long before her daughter was kidnapped.

Georgia is a fearless and dedicated investigator and, with major assistance from Ellie, she begins to make the wrong people very nervous. Her investigation will carry her from Chicago, where it all started, to Wisconsin, and on to an Arizona border town where the rules of the Old West still seem to be in play while illegal immigrants and drugs cross into the U.S.

By the time Doubleback reaches its exciting conclusion, Georgia is already battered, bruised and having to compensate for a broken arm. Considering the hornet’s nest she has stirred up, though, she is lucky to be alive. She knows that – but she is going to make someone pay, or she is going to die trying, maybe both.

Georgia Davis and Ellie Foreman make a winning team and readers of Doubleback will want to see the two work together again in future books. Author Hellman is in the enviable position of being able to continue with two individual series or to merge the two into a new one. Either way is fine with me because I am now a fan of both ladies.

Rated at: 4.0

Snakes in the House

Book Chase is just over thirty months old now.

During those thirty months, I have had three instances where "Anonymous" has stopped by to post potentially slanderous comments about the subject of one of my posts. One attack was on an author, one on a television personality, and one on someone secondarily related to a post.

Luckily for me, Blogger allows its users to set-up instant email notification for when someone makes a comment to any of my Book Chase posts. That allows me to get in quickly to nip the nastiness in the bud before too many people have likely even noticed it. "No harm, no foul" is about all a blogger can hope for when someone with a personal axe to grind decides to hijack a post for their own personal reasons. Even with that policy, though, I did have the brother of an American television icon hint at legal action because I let something get by me for a few days. Let's just say, lesson learned, and that will never happen again.

I bring all this up because the third instance of a crazy, personal vendetta intruded on my life just this week. Now I'm curious. Have you, my fellow bloggers, had this kind of thing happen on your own blogs? If so, how have you handled it, guys?

As Long as He Needs Me

I finished reading As Long as He Needs Me a few days ago but I purposely delayed my review for a bit to see if my immediate impression of the book would change over time. I think that is what happened, but only to a minor degree.

As a strict rule, I do my best to avoid “romance novels” because I have yet to find one that actually seems real to me. I do not mean to put down an entire fiction sub-genre because I know how popular romance novels are. But I know myself well enough to understand that they are not for me, a fact of life that makes reviewing one difficult. I do not know that Mary Verdick considers herself a romance novelist since this is the first of her books I have read but I would call As Long as He Needs Me a psychological romance novel. And it was the “psychological” part of the novel that appealed to me.

Kitty and Clem Johanssen have decided to celebrate their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary with the kind of cruise they have dreamed about for years. Kitty and Clem have done well for themselves in small-town America, raising a family of three children, and running a large general store in their little town. Life has not always been easy for the Johanssen family, but now the time seems right for them to splurge on their dream vacation.

The vacation, however, is destined to be nothing like what they expected. Things get shaky right from the beginning when, in a rush to get to the cruise boat on time, Clem is so slow to react to two New York City con men that they snatch all of his cash and rush off before he realizes what has just happened. Clem is understandably upset, but his immediate reaction is to blame the entire city, not himself, for what happened. It is only later, after he has had time to consider exactly how it all happened, that Clem blames himself.

Clem, though, does more than just blame himself for losing their vacation money. He allows the theft to rob him of all self-confidence and he behaves in a way that starts to undermine Kitty’s own faith in their thirty-five-year marriage. As Clem withdraws into himself more and more, and begins drinking heavily, Kitty faces a crisis of confidence almost as serious as the one he suffers – and reacts almost as badly.

Kitty, alone as she is for much of the trip, has time to think about all that has happened during her long relationship with Clem, and the reader finds that the Johanssen family has had more than its share of ups and downs. The marriage, again facing an uncertain future, is very lucky to have survived for so many years.

Mary Verdick tells a good story. There are numerous twists and turns involving every member of the family that help explain the present day behavior of her two main characters. I was at first filled with sympathy for both Kitty and Clem but, by the book’s end, my sympathy was gone, along with most of my respect. I found both characters, in their eagerness to blame their own bad behavior on the behavior of others, to be rather weak people and I started to believe that they deserve each other. That may, or may not, be what the author intended; even after an extra few days thinking about that, I am not sure.

Rated at: 3.5

Keep It Local, Chum

This is a clever little piece to encourage book buyers to support their local independent bookstores over the corporate giants like Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books-A-Million. It is written in a 1950s style of propaganda that gives it a light feel, but the message is a serious one.



Isn't it amazing that this style was once used as a serious delivery system for propaganda? Have we really gotten that smarter or were we just seriously naive in the first half of the 20th century?